I'm a potter and experimental archaeologist, that means that I create replicas of ancient pots, make reconstructions of ancient kilns, firings, workshops etc. This blog is a journal of some of my recent work. All text and images are copyright if you wish to use them please ask.

Saturday, 2 April 2016

Replicating The Aldbourne Cup

I always enjoy what I
do, but lately I've had some amazing commissions, here's the story of
one of them: Towards the end of 2015 I was contacted by John Dymond
and Alan Heasman, from the Aldbourne Heritage Centre in Wiltshire,
asking if I would be able to replicate the Aldbourne Cup for display
in their museum. I knew the pot well or at least I thought I did: It
was excavated by Cannon Greenwell, in October 1878, from a Bronze Age
barrow near the village. Normally my replicas recreate a pot as it
looked on the day it was first made, however after some discussion
and various meetings of members of the Aldbourne Heritage

I had replicated it on
numerous occasions based on drawings and photographs but I decided to
make an appointment to visit the British Museum, the cup's current
home, and have a close look at it. I'm really glad that I did,
because what hadn't been obvious from the images, was the fact that
the perforations that formed the decoration, were circular rather
than square. Many Bronze-Age beakers, food vessels and the like, are
decorated by impressing a shallow toothed comb into the wet clay,
forming dotted lines. These combs are almost invariably made by
cutting grooves across the edge of a flat piece of bone or antler,
this results in a row square or rectangular teeth. The Aldbourne cup
on the other hand, had been decorated with a comb composed of round
pins, probably three 2mm pins placed in a row and sharpened at the
tips to produce 1mm holes spaced 1mm apart. As luck would have it the
same burial produced 2 bronze pins pretty much fitting this
description, which previous investigators had suggested may have been
tattooing tools. A little research yielded images of Polynesian
tattooing combs, that informed my reconstruction of a tool suitable
for decorating the pot.

Another peculiarity of
the decoration was that, while I knew that there were two holes
passing through the wall of the pot, as there are with quite a few
examples of accessory vessels, in this case some of the impressed
decoration actually appeared to go right through the wall of the pot.
I believe that this was accidental and occurred where impressions on
the outside and inside, exactly coincided with one another.

One reason why such
deep decoration might be desirable is if it was intended to be filled
with some contrasting coloured material for decorative effect. When
looking at the original, it did appear to me that this might be the
case ad I thought that in some of the holes I could detect evidence
of a lighter material. For this reason I went back to the Heritage
Centre members asking the question “to inlay or not to inlay”.
Warwick Hood, who had done considerable research, and presented a
paper to the Aldbourne Heritage Group on the subject of the cup,
kindly pointed out the following reference in Canon Greenwell's 1890
Archaeolgia article, entitled “Recent Researches in Barrows in
Yorkshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, etc.”:

"There is one
particular in which it is of much interest, and which has not
hitherto, I believe, been observed in pottery from a British barrow.
The impressions forming the pattern, and which have been made by a
sharp-pointed tool, probably a bronze pricker, have been filled in
with some white material like finely powdered chalk applied when in a
semi-liquid state. This white material was certainly not the result
of the vessel being in contact with chalk, for the surrounding earth
was very dark coloured and without any admixture of chalk whatever."

The Aldbourne IV barrow
had in fact contained two Aldbourne Cups and in this case Greenwell
is referring to the second. Nevertheless the evidence suggested that
this had been the case with both the cups and the decision was made,
that in the case of the cup in original state, white chalk paste
would be applied. This was done by crushing chalk to a paste with a
little water, rubbing it into the decoration of the fired pot,
polishing off the excess and sealing it into place with a layer of
beeswax. I knew it would dramatically change the appearance of the
pot, but I probably wasn't prepared for just how stunning it would
look. I learned so much more but watch out for a paper later.

Although the Aldbourne
Heritage Centre has been open during it's development, I was
delighted to be invited to attend the official opening, along with
Phil Harding of Time Team fame and Neil Wilkin, Curator, British and
European Bronze Age Collection at the British Museum, where the
replicas were officially handed over to the Centre.

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About Me

When I handle an ancient pot it’s a little like shaking hands with the original potter; a handshake across thousands of years. I can feel the impressions made by their thumbs, the pressure of their fingers pushing the wet clay into the palm of the hand to swell out the belly of the pot, the sweep of a tool to decorate the surface. All of these movements are like frozen, or possibly more correctly, fired moments in time, preserved and waiting for me to decode. When I come to emulate their actions and re-create one of these prehistoric masterpieces, I get to know the potter a little better. A conversation takes place … “Oh I see why you did that” ….”What did you use to make that mark?”.........”Now that’s clever, decorating it like that”. The conversation may seem a little one sided but the answers come back to me from the clay. Above all the act of making a piece gives me a deep sense of respect for a fellow craftsperson.